Birch Hill Hospital is a health facility in Wardle, Littleborough, near

Rochdale Rochdale ( ) is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, at the foothills of the South Pennines in the dale on the River Roch, northwest of Oldham and northeast of Manchester. It is the administrative centre of the Metropolitan Borough ...

Greater Manchester Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tam ...

. It was managed by

Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust was an acute hospital trust which, until 2019, operated Fairfield General Hospital in Bury, North Manchester General Hospital, the Royal Oldham Hospital and Rochdale Infirmary, all in Greater Manchester. It i ...

when it was a general hospital. Parts of the hospital are now managed as a psychiatric hospital by Pennine Care. There is also the Floyd Unit which is a Neuro Rehabilitation Unit managed by Pennine Acute.

History

The facility has its origins in the Dearnley Union Workhouse which was designed by George Woodhouse and Edward Potts and opened in November 1877. An infirmary was added at the north of the site in 1902. During the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

parts of the hospital housed injured service personnel. It became the Dearnley Public Assistance Institution in 1930 and joined the

National Health Service The National Health Service (NHS) is the umbrella term for the publicly funded healthcare systems of the United Kingdom (UK). Since 1948, they have been funded out of general taxation. There are three systems which are referred to using the " ...

as Birch Hill Hospital in 1948. From 1974 Rochdale District Health Authority managed the Rochdale Hospitals, including Birch Hill and Rochdale Infirmary. In 1992 Rochdale Healthcare NHS Trust was formed. Rochdale Healthcare NHS Trust became part of Pennine Acute NHS Hospitals Trust following a merger of 5 hospital sites in April 2002. After services transferred to Rochdale Infirmary, Birch Hill Hospital closed in January 2013. The site was subsequently sold to

Persimmon The persimmon is the edible fruit of a number of species of trees in the genus '' Diospyros''. The most widely cultivated of these is the Oriental persimmon, ''Diospyros kaki'' ''Diospyros'' is in the family Ebenaceae, and a number of non-per ...

for residential use: the developers have retained the clock tower as part of the new development. Other parts of the hospital were retained and there is now a psychiatric hospital on a smaller site. In 2011 Prospect Place a low secure mental health unit for men with severe and enduring mental health problems was opened, having cost £13.6 million to build.

Facilities

The current psychiatric hospital consists of Low Secure Male Rehabilitation Called Prospect Place, Adult Mental Health outpatient and two wards Moorside and Hollingworth, Older People' Mental Health including outpatients and Beech Ward, and outpatient Child and Adolescent Mental Health.

References

{{authority control Hospitals established in 1877 1877 establishments in England Hospitals in Greater Manchester Defunct hospitals in England